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Ukraine's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to fall by 12 percent in 2009, forecasts Economy Minister Bohdan Danylyshyn. Ukraine's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to fall by 12% in 2009, forecasts Economy Minister Bohdan Danylyshyn.

"Despite the fact that we have a low comparative basis for the second half of 2008 and a certain revival of the economy seen from the second quarter, the [GDP] decline is most likely to be about 12% over the year in general," he said in an interview with the 2000 weekly.

According to him, such a cooling of the economy has undermined the resource basis of budgets of all the levels, but that this had been difficult to forecast when the national budget for 2009 was being drafted.

"While drawing up late in 2008 the budget for this year, the government proceeded from the fact that the impact of the global financial crisis on the domestic economy should not be too catastrophic, as it mainly had foreign roots… Last autumn, the situation in the economy was stable in general," he said.

He also pointed out the importance of International Monetary Fund's loans to the budget.

"The alternative to such debt-related financing of the [budget] deficit is either an increase in the tax burden on the entire economy or … methods of financing domestic borrowing through printing money, which [risks] high inflation," he said.